AGENCY PERFORMANCE LEAGUE.

The results of the top 50 agencies suggest early signs of a recovery in the industry, but it's too early to start popping the corks, Claire Beale says.

Advertising's in a recession, the industry's workforce has been culled, profits are being squeezed and clients are driving cost efficiencies harder than ever. So the latest corporate statistics filed by agencies at Companies House were never going to make for light reading.

The first financial results to really reflect the impact of the marketing downturn show a picture of a strained industry. Companies that last year seemed to be keeping their head above the recessionary tide are now gasping for respite. If you think the recession has been tough, here is the hard proof.

In these Sarbanes-Oxley times, with the industry driven back to using one-dimensional billings figures rather than declared income as a regular thermometer of health, filed accounts provide the only credible and robust view of agency performance. Yet the tardiness of accounts filing means that the current industry data spans several years of financial performance. A number of groups appear to have deferred filing accounts this year, possibly with the intention of putting off public exposure of bad news. Neither Saatchi & Saatchi Group nor Interpublic had filed accounts since December 2000 by the time this report was being compiled by Willott Kingston Smith. Even so, it is the most comprehensive gauge of the industry's momentum over the past few years.

And it's not all as gloomy as feared: the top 50 agencies overall managed to turn in a slight increase in income. And even an increase as slight as the 1 per cent recorded here is really very welcome indeed.

For the nimbler, younger agencies, start-up growth curves remain unbowed.

Mother, Delaney Lund Knox Warren, Fallon London and Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy all reported increased income levels.